Virtual Communities

Abstract

The growth of virtual communities and their continuous impact on social, economic and technological structures of societies has attracted a great deal of interest among researchers, systems designers and policy makers to examine the formation, development, sustainability and utility of these communities. Over the last two decades, the growth in research into virtual communities, though fairly diverse, can be broadly categorized into two dominant perspectives—technological determinism and social constructivism. The basic tenet of the technology determinism research is that technology shapes cultural values, social structure, and knowledge. This Chapter provides a general overview of research on virtual communities. It describes two particular types of virtual communities relevant to the analysis of social capital described in the book; virtual learning communities and distributed communities of practice. The goal of the Chapter is to provide an overall context in which social capital is reported in the book. The Chapter also describes other areas in which virtual communities are currently used. These include education, health care, business, socialization and mediating interaction among people in Diaspora.